


Stories of the Inquisition

by PrincexSalem



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Companion Lavellan, Companion Warden (Dragon Age), Gen, Multi, past Solavellan, spirit of compassion oc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 04:22:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16946925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincexSalem/pseuds/PrincexSalem
Summary: In which Kethryllia questions just how her aunt can handle the mantles of Warden, Warden-Commander and the Hero of Ferelden without buckling.





	1. Spirit Healers

Spirit Healers are valued in the circle.

A statement that Korrine hates more than anything. Valued in the circle simply means they won’t immediately mangle you for sneezing but there’s still a chain around your neck daring you to step out of line.

Kinloch is as Kinloch is.

There are always injuries to be healed. Magical mishaps and things she’d never speak of again. Some of the others whisper when they think they aren’t being watched. “Favored by the First Enchanter that one.” “Do you see how much freedom she gets?” “It’s the spirit of compassion that hovers around her. They think she’s harmless with all her singing.”

The templars always hovering though but they say nothing of the Whispers and she can’t help but wonder if the youngest among them know what they’ve signed on to. Korrine can’t blame them, of course, she’s heard the same chants, the same sermons since she could remember.

Magic was dangerous.

Magic was a sin.

Mages were lucky to have Templar protection.

Mages were always one step away from becoming abominations.

The last point she hadn’t understood until her Harrowing. Until they’d fed her lyrium and set a demon on her. That was why no one spoke of it.

It was a terrible thing.

A normal thing, or so she’d thought until she’d joined the Grey Wardens and finally gathered enough courage to whisper about it to her new friends. Zevran has been horrified, much as an assassin could be horrified by the twists of a place he’d never seen.

Nyssa, Nyssa had been furious.

“The Dalish don’t set demons on untrained mages. We don’t need to prove that abominations exist by sacrificing someone.” She’d trailed off into curses and Korrine had finally understood the weight of what she’d escaped.

No. Not escaped. Simply traded one leash for another. The Circle was a slow death, just like being a Warden was a slow death.

Spirit Healers are valuable.

Maybe that was why she’d survived a decade past her Joining. Compassion had been a constant companion since the Blight. Always hovering at her shoulder, whispering in her ears with a new song. Compassion too held her tongue when she arrived at Skyhold, two weeks after Nyssa to a greeting from the Inquisition’s Ambassador and Commander and the Inquisitor herself.

‘He is not as he was.’ Compassion had whispered and Korrine had agreed. A decade had changed them all for better or worse. So she’d greeted them all with a smile, swallowed hesitancy and embraced the poor doomed soul that shouldered the fate of them all.


	2. Spirit Healers

When Compassion takes a mortal form, Korrine doesn’t lose her ability to act as a spirit healer. Compassion is still there, still helping even if their strength is diminished. Likewise, where the people from Kinloch thought Korrine’s singing was a byproduct of her association with Compassion, she proves them wrong regularly at Skyhold.

Any magic she spins is entirely her own, amplified on the nights when the Inquisitor’s inner circle take over the tavern. Korrine is no minstrel but she knows songs to make the heart weep and to heal. They’re given freely, taught to any that want to learn but few can manage to spin a fragment of the power into them. A holdover from the family she can’t remember.

Yaviel learns some of Korrine’s songs, though the magic hardly manifests the same and she never sings them on those nights in the tavern. That’s for Korrine and Nyssa. Yaviel’s songs are reserved for the road, for the camps and when the battle weariness threatens to weigh them all down. Sparrow, Varric calls her. Like the pretty little birds that hang around their camp at dawn and sing and sing until they move on.

Sparrow.

Her magic is raw, lifting and falling with each breath but the power is there. A distraction from the pain or entertainment in the cold dark between sunset and dawn. The first time she does it, they’re at Suledin Keep, the cold making her side ache with half healed wounds. She could have died on a Red Templar’s sword. (How does she tell them she did? They’d never let her out of their sight if she did.) She could have, she did, but there are people that she can help if given half a chance.

No healing, she promises, no healing like that.

Yaviel doesn’t have the strength for that level of healing but she can still sing. And sing she does. Of spring and of hope, of peace and love. She sings until her lungs and sides are on fire. No healing. Not in the traditional sense.


	3. Fadewalker

Compassion has met Solas before. In the fade perhaps as Korrine stayed and still stays a respectful distance away from him. Too far for them to have become acquainted through Korrine. Still they’ve met and Compassion has named him. Just as they’ve named everyone.

Fadewalker.

They call him, still learning that flitting in and out of sight no longer works (Cole says it happened to him too and Compassion only missed it sometimes now) and that they shouldn’t really bother anyone else. But how else are they supposed to play with the little one that alternates hiding behind Solas or in her mother’s skirts?

“Fadewalker. You remind me of home.” Compassion says one day, twirling flowers and sparks into a show for the little one.

“The fade?”

“Yes. You remind me of home, of the other mortals that walked there like you do.”

“Dont you miss it? You could go back.”

A hum and then silence, the sparks turning to butterflies while the child giggles. “Yes but I would miss this.”


	4. Drabbles #5 - The Burden of Divinity by Princex Salem — Werdsmith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kethryllia questions just how her aunt can handle the mantles of Warden, Warden-Commander and the Hero of Ferelden without buckling.

“My lady Herald.”

“Lady Inquisitor.”

Two titles she had never wanted but still wore draped over her shoulders. To be the Herald was to be something divine. Divine to the humans and everything else be damned. She’d stopped objecting of course. After Haven. After Mother Giselle’s consistent needling, she’d stopped objecting. Let the humans call her divine, it wasn’t as if they cared enough to listen that she wasn’t. She was the symbol. The beacon to keep them hoping, to keep them fighting and for that she couldn’t fault them. Even if it made her skin crawl. Even if some days she wanted to grab her hart from the stables, ride out and never come back. Hope for them while she slowly strangled under the weight.

It was a wonder to her now, watching her aunt and Lady Surana move through Skyhold. They were veterans at being vessels for other people’s hopes and dreams. The Hero of Ferelden. The Royal Enchanter. They who had seen the horror of the Blight and walked out of it alive.

Nyssa moved with predatory grace, the smoke blues and silver of her armor shifting in the candlelight, the bright blaze of a griffon and silver wings giving pause before people scrambled out of her way. Warden, Warden-Commander, Hero. The Ferelden among their number whispered and bowed but whether she heard them or not, Keth truly didn’t know. This was a side to her aunt that she rarely saw and hardly knew. The reaction from the twins was clear as well. They had never seen their mother in this way either.

Then there was Lady Surana. Korrine.

The woman who had just as easily squealed and clung to the Inquisition’s spymaster as she had swept Josephine off to discuss alliances and favours she could call in. Korrine was no predatory warrior like Nyssa but there was still something unsettling about the way she moved. She had seen battles and horrors untold. She had patched the injured and given mercy to the dying. She had walked the halls of Ferelden’s circle and lived while everything was crumbling. Yet she’d stayed kind. Firm but kind and Keth had to wonder how she’d managed it. The temptation to ask was there. The temptation to ask a great many things was there but she wondered if it would do any good.

She was to be something divine and all she could do was stave off the waves of sickness that came with using her anchor. Stave off the fear that made her question how much longer until the anchor finally killed her. It wasn’t an ‘if’ anymore, not with it spreading up her arm. No it was a matter of when.

“How do you do it?” She finally asked one early morning, bundled in the depths of a heavy fur coat and staring out the frosted glass of her room. “How do you stop the fear and expectations from eating you alive?” Korrine had hummed, adding spices and herbs to steaming mugs but it was Nyssa who answered.

“The fear’s always there - thanks Kori - the gnawing pit in your stomach that you won’t do or be enough is always there.” Nyssa’s words were accompanied by a shrug. “I made choices a decade ago that haunt me now and there’s nothing I can do about them.”

“Mhm. You just learn to live with it…for however long you have left. There’s nothing else to it.” Korrine chimed in draping herself over a chair. “You’ve got a better chance here than we had in Denerim at any rate.” She paused to take a sip and sighed. “Better people to advise you too.”

Learn to live with it.

She’d made the choice to live hadn’t she? Facing down Corypheus for the first time and she’d refused to lay there and die. Maybe that was all there was to it. To bearing a mantle of hope for others and destruction for yourself. Live and hope that that would be enough. Hope that the legacy you left behind would be enough to make up for the stolen years.

“A toast to living then.”

Three mugs went up and three doomed women with mantles and titles that guaranteed their destruction laughed because there were no more tears to shed.


	5. Hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cutting hair makes cutting ties easier or at the very least that's Yaviel's hope in the wake of Crestwood.

She’d considered cutting her hair, hacking away the crimson strands until it barely brushed her shoulders. Until maybe, it was as short as her twin’s and just as dark. Anything to rid herself of lingering ghosts.

‘Cutting it all off won’t help you forget him.’ Practical Alyurae had pointed out while she’d stared at the scissors with a scowl. ‘And besides you love your hair.’

Had loved her hair.

Just like Solas had loved her hair and had spent endless hours braiding it or running his fingers through it until they both fell asleep. Yaviel had loved her hair, somewhere deep down she still did, but now every stray strand felt like a ghost across her shoulders and down her back. She didn’t need more ghosts, the ghost of once beloved hands in her hair least of all.

So her hair is the last casualty in this war of broken hearts. From waist length to barely brushing her shoulders, it is a necessary casualty.


	6. Aftermath

There’s a solid week of the Exalted Council that Keth doesn’t remember.

She remembers being conscious enough to stumble through the eluvian and then nothing. Her memories of her dreams are better, spotty but better. Yaviel finds her there, a heartbeat of worry before she loses the connection and the shifting darkness of the fade claims her again. There are worse things than the emptiness of the fade and the looming of the Black City in the distance. The Nightmare still holds sway, a court all it’s own in a twisted castle of smoky stone. The nightmare doesn’t find her, not fully, though she can hear it taunting. Hawke had given herself over to give them a chance at escape.

Was she still there? Had the demon devoured her or worse turned her into something less than human but more at the same time?

Keth had been tempted to find out, to brave the Nightmare’s domain again, to try and free Hawke…if that was still Hawke that remained and not a demon wearing her skin. Foolish temptations, especially without a way to free Hawke. Not without the anchor to tear open the fade again. Solas had made certain she’d never have that power again. The Wolf had taken the anchor and her arm along with it. Funny how that didn’t hurt as much here, drifting in and out of coherent dreams in the fade.

Coherent dreams that drifted too close to being real, to being awake. Later, later they’d tell her that she had been awake for a precious few minutes. Awake and screaming, sometimes in elven, sometimes in common and always too briefly for them to shake her out of it.

There was a solid week missing from her waking memories and her dreams were a jumble of drifting and avoiding demons and the Nightmare and the lingering guilt of what had happened to Hawke. The whispers from the Well of Sorrows creep up frequently, speaking in riddles and a twisting tongue she can only just follow. The whispers are the ones that finally drive her from sleep and the fade.

Awake hurts.

Awake hurts, reminds her of what she lost, of the beating and battle she can remember a bit too vividly. It hurts trying to move, it hurts even more to try and speak but she has to. There are too many tears, too many people clamoring to see her. Too much worry threatening to overwhelm her.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.“

Her throat hurts too much but there’s so much more she wants to say. ‘Please don’t cry.’ The words aren’t there and the healers chase the lot out until only Cullen remains, refusing to leave her and she tangles her fingers in his shirt. Solid and here, nothing like the dreams that had been her companions for the last week.

"I’m sorry I was gone so long.”


End file.
